My second WordPress plugin: wp-flashbox

Update #1: There are some problems with the plugin in Firefox 2 for the Mac and Flock: FlashBox is loaded, the images are loaded into it, but FlashBox is not visible.
I am looking into it, sorry Mac users!
There is also a difference between Firefox for the PC and IE for the PC: it works perfectly, but in Firefox FlashBox will be restarted and in IE FlashBox starts where it left of (if it’s started before). These is not a bug this is a feature!

Update #2: A feature I forgot to tell about: you don’t have to change the rel="lightbox" tags, it will also work with FlashBox. If you’re planning to use both, you have to use rel="flashbox"– tag. But if you want to use FlashBox instead of Lightbox, you have te deactivate lightbox!

FlashBox is my attempt to create a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page.

Read more about FlashBox in detail, the different post about FlashBoxor you can follow my progress in the Flashbox directory where my experiments are.

But to sum it up: It had to be smaller then the other (Lightbox, Thickbox and Graybox), but with the animation (like Lightbox).
Or just another alternative for Lightbox / Thickbox / Graybox?

And because I wanted to use it on my own blog, I wrote a plugin too. And I’m not afraid to share it with you.

Download WordPress Plugin – Download FlashBox v1.0

Download wp-flashbox wp-flashbox_v01.zip (17,9 kB)

Usage instructions

• Download the zip file and decompress into wp-content/plugins.
• Go to your Plugins screen in the WordPress admin area, and activate “Flashboxâ€?.
• In the code view, you get a “Flashbox”-button where you can fill in url of the image, the caption and the groupname

Minimal Flash plugin version is 8!

Code example

This is how FlashBox looks in html:

Gallery example

I have created a gallery with Badass Robots used in film. A example of animation, loading, caption and navigation.
More examples can be found in the FlashBox development directory.

Transformers Movie Optimus Prime
terminator
robocop
Robot B9 from Lost In Space
ABC Warrior from Judge Dredd
Cain
ed209
droideka
Roy Batty
cylon-centurian
cylons

Improvements

You see some improvements, let me know

These are the improvements I see:

• Flash 7 plugin (nice to have) as minimum requirement, FlashBox uses now Flash 8 plugin which should cover about 94% of the users (source Adobe)
• If no Flash plugin is available (or not the correct version) there should be a possibility to view without Flashbox
• A button in tinyMCE the default wysiwyg editor
• Thumbnails, or something similar so you can skip a couple images in a gallery
• Autoplay / slideshow
• Resize big images
• Feedback if img not there (error)
• Feedback from a slow server
• More information about img
• …..

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.